These robots adapt to their injuries - and it's amazing

I wanna walk like you, adapt like you

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I think we can all agree that the scariest bit of The Terminator takes place during the film's final moments: a one-armed, legless cyborg torso crawls after Sarah Connor like an unstoppable, Austrian death machine.

Robots of the real world certainly aren't that advanced or psychotic yet, but a piece of new research reveals that they are becoming better at adapting.

The robots in the video below have a "map" of 13,000 different combinations of leg movements. Interestingly, each of the six-legged bots learns to walk slightly differently to another. As Science Mag explains, some robots choose to walk using all six of their legs, others use just a few of them.

But when the robot becomes injured, it goes back to its map and reconfigures the best way of moving - without the need for a programmer to intervene.

The potential here is huge, and while the algorithm still relies on a list of possible combinations, it could be used to sustain robots that take damage, or even help robots adapt to obstacles found in new terrains.